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Asked about the importance of culture in making an acquisition, he didn’t hesitate for a second. Guido Jouret, Cisco’s CTO of Emerging Technology, said “We pass on acquisitions if the culture isn’t right. If it isn’t right, nothing else matters.”

Jouret is responsible for incubating Cisco’s future billion-dollar businesses, so I asked him after he gave the keynote at last week’s Plug and Play Expo what he thought the critical qualities in a startup’s culture that he looked for in acquisition. I shouldn’t have been surprised that he’d rattle off four things instantly…

Growing a company from 20 people to 300 means you’ve grown through the milestone of 100-120 employees. As a founder, this is right around the time that you you start to see people in the halls, and wonder if they work there, or are just visiting. Before that point, you likely recognize pretty much everyone. It also means that if you averaged out the hiring, a new person has been joining the Twitter team every other workday throughout those two years. That’s fast! Continue reading →

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I’m mostly agnostic about how people track their To Do list, and I’ve seen nearly every system work and fail: walls full of post-its, whiteboards, online calendars, iPhone apps, GTD, handwritten paper lists, index cards, and Excel spreadsheets. In general, the system that works for people is the system they’re willing to commit to and use regularly, and nearly anything will work. For entrepreneurs who are having trouble juggling all of their responsibilities and commitments, I tend to track their major commitments week after week, so that we can notice patterns in what is getting done, and what isn’t.

In a typical week with no major emergencies, several of the items on the list will be finished, or at least be off to a good start. But, there are often a few items that linger on someone’s to do list for several weeks or even months. When that happens, the client and I do some detective work to figure out what’s going on. Continue reading →

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Marcy Swenson and Dale Larson are executive coaches who work with startup founders and entrepreneurs.

As a veteran of ten startups and small businesses as a founder or early employee, and as a consultant and advisor, Dale helped bring hundreds of products and services to market over nearly 30 years. Now a full-time executive coach to mostly venture-backed tech startup CEOs, he helps high-performing leaders to be happier and more successful in all aspects of their work and life, continuing to learn and grow while they build outstanding products, teams and businesses.
dale (at) startuphappiness (dot) comLinkedInTwitter

Prior to becoming a coach, Marcy was a co-founder and VP Eng with two successful exits. The most recent was Critical Path (“we handle the world’s email!”). She built the tech team that led to IPO (Nasdaq: CPTH). Forbes named CPTH the fastest-growing high-tech company in the world in 1999. She works primarily with tech startup founders and teams.
marcy (at) startuphappiness (dot) comLinkedInTwitter

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